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Saturday unfolded a balmy sixty degrees, shockingly sunny, and with just the mildest of breeze from some direction or another.  That’s what left a few of us worryingly overdressed for what was arguably the first road race of the new decade in Texas.

Aside from the technical glitch that 2010 might be more like the last year of the decade than the first, the Copperas Cove road race took place on Saturday (1/23) in North Central Texas, a short drive from Baylor University in Temple Texas and maybe a rifle-shot from Fort Hood.  Baylor was well represented, Texas Tech had a good group as well, and then there were clubs from Houston, Austin, and riders from as far north as Dallas/Fort Worth, which, speaking from personal experience, was about a three hour trek each way.   And it was well worth it.

After months of training almost exclusively indoors, the chance to go outside and see how all that spin work translates to the road, we got an opening day that might have been straight out of April or May in the Midwest.  For those who still await their season openers once the snow is cleared and potholes filled, let’s bring your racing fever to a proper boil with a little play-by-play of what took place in the Cat 4/5 race at the Cove today.

First, it seemed like the good folks who ran and officiated the race had their act in gear.  Each heat went off precisely on time, and the escort vehicles and all the other support were exactly where they needed to be.  After the 3/4 men’s and women’s groups went out, we waited 15 minutes until our allotted start time arrived.  As usual, guys mostly stood around and chatted about nothing in particular while we were on hold.  The USA Cycling official kept us informed of how much time remained, and gave us a brief overview of the course rules, but that didn’t take long so we had plenty of time to plot strategy or try to keep our nerves under control.

Which brings me to a question.  Have you ever watched your heartrate monitor while standing at the start line?

As backdrop, my resting heartrate is generally below 50.  Of course, this presumes I’m resting on the couch with a bowl of ice cream watching Biggest Loser and feeling smug and sanctimonious.  At the other end of the stress spectrum, standing in the driveway of the Copperas Cove Community Center, it floated between 90 and 110 and all I could think about was that the race had better get underway soon or I’ll be exhausted before we got off the line.  Next time, I’m bringing an extra Goo of some sort just to replenish the nervous energy I burn off before I ever start riding the bike.

Anyway, eventually we were set free and escorted through the neutral zone, and as soon as it ended, you know exactly what happened.  Well, actually, you’d be wrong, because precisely nothing happened.  For about the first five miles we collective fought our nervous energies and gravity, as it was difficult to remain upright while pedaling a pace somewhere around 16 mph.  Someone mentioned that last year’s race had gone off like wildfire right from the start, and wasn’t it amazing how different this one was getting underway?

And naturally that upset the proverbial applecart, and the race began in earnest.

The race course lacks hills by any strict definition.  But it isn’t flat, either.  The profile shows a sawtooth blade of moderate sized teeth rising and descending a couple hundred feet over anywhere from a quarter mile to a mile of distance covered.  The descents tended to feel long and typically were followed by substantial flat areas, so any speed gained going downhill tended to be carried a long distance afterward.  On the other hand, some of the ascents were long, grinding matters, followed by flats, followed by more grinding.

At mile 5 or thereabouts, we came to one of those ascents and as we arrived at the base the pace had been lifted to the low 20s, which still wasn’t a huge effort, but of course it made a suitable condition for an attack to launch as we started to climb. Sitting in the front third of the group, I could see three riders jump attack off the front, and moments later a fourth bridged the 25 yards or so of advantage the attack group had managed.  Of course, everybody else was trying to either get with the attack group, close the gap, or just avoid getting dropped, so suddenly I was listening to my Garmin 705 reporting that I’d managed a new max heartrate, clicking a 188 (which isn’t bad when your nearest birthday that has a zero in it also has a 5).

By the top of the rise, the attack group was still close enough to be hit with a waterbottle from the main group, if anyone had cared to toss one, and the main group of 70 or so remaining riders seemed largely intact.  Hitting the fast forward button, we rode the next 20 miles more or less cat-and-mouse, with the attack group being kept between 1-2 minutes in front, and neither group managing to change that.  Then the main group dynamics seemed to take on a different personality.

Around mile 30 – and the race course is 50 in total – it seemed that every ascent and every time we had to change directions at an intersection brought a sharp acceleration which was either an effort to reel in the four rider attack group, a new attack by riders not wanting to finish with the pack, or simply a series of overreactions as everybody worried about what everybody else might be planning to do.

The first few surges like this resulted in nothing more than wasted energy, and the main group seemed to regroup afterward.  But some guys were swearing and many of us were getting increasingly uncomfortable as a result of these hard digs.  Around mile thirty, the string finally snapped, as an ascend-flat-ascend section provided for two surges with only moments of recovery in between, and the main group split into two cells, with roughly a third of the riders making the selection, and two thirds falling back quickly.  If only the attacks had ended there, it would have been a pleasant if uneventful race for yours truly.

I’d managed to become the final member to gain entry to the select chase group, having been been sitting in the front third of the pack when it had gotten over stretched, and had briefly glanced over my shoulder to see a gap of a few bicycle lengths that had momentarily split the peloton into two cells.  At that moment, the realization had come to mind that this was where one either had it, or they didn’t.  Fortunately, I was feeling okay at that time and could see the top of the rise and knew I could continue putting out the effort to stay with the front group.  Nevertheless, for the second time that day I heard my Garmin warning that I was deep in the red zone.

By mile 35 I was riding as defensively as possible.  A dark cold front was rolling over us and the wind was kicking up to 10-15 mph, and various leg muscles were undergoing tentative cramping — not quite seizing up, but firing warning shots, anyway.  I tried to hide from the wind and avoid the frequent pedaling/coasting/braking that tends to happen as one yo-yo’s at that the back of the group.  However, I worried increasingly about my ability to continue to respond to attacks and surges that seemed in no shortage.

Just short of the feedzone, the select group surged up an incline and I made the choice to let go, hoping to stave off the muscle cramps and possibly get back onto the pack when the group settled in at the top of the incline or as it worked its way through the feedzone.  It was a tough decision to make, letting the group go.  They were the bus home.  They represented the ability to ride the next 10-15 miles of the race with the benefit of being out of the wind.  They were also covering the course at a pace around 25 mph, which there was no way I’d be able to do solo.  On the other hand, I knew all too well that my legs needed recovery, and without giving them that, I’d soon blow-up and be looking for a ride from the sag wagon (as I found myself doing at last year’s Hottern Hell 100 for this precise reason).

Fortunately, there were others who’d become similarly disenfranchised from the select group, and quickly we had four then six riders working together to try to get back on.  I plead guilty to having been of essentially no help in that effort, in that in deference to trying to recover my legs, I flatly avoided taking any work in the wind.  In my defense, the group was only marginally effective anyway.  We had two strong riders who kept wanting to ride off the front of our six man group, only to tire, sit up, and wait for us to rejoin.  We had others who didn’t seem to have a good grasp of the mechanics of riding a paceline, and constantly put themselves in the wrong position or jostled back and forth sideways to such a degree as to be a worry, if not a hazard.  As a result, our small group ended up strung out and straggling to the finish.

Copperas Cove has a long downhill finish which I was greatly looking forward to.  I kept this cherry in mind the entire time I slogged up the ascents that came in a series of steps from miles 40-45, riding due west into a strong wind and spitting rain coming from, you guessed it, the west.  About 8 miles from the finish, the course turned ninety degrees and at least the climbing came with a beneficial cross-wind.  At mile 49, the climbing was finished and the road tilted gently downward, and with a favorable tailwind it was a 30 mph flight down to the finish.  Coming around the final bend I spotted the road cones, and was incredibly pleased at it.  Then I saw a sheriff’s car blocking traffic and thought to myself that nobody in my family had ever been so happy to see law enforcement waiting up ahead for them.

So that was race 1 for 2010, and as I rolled to my car and the cold rain continued to spit and almost everything hurt, I was very happy to have gotten it under my belt.  This was my second Texas race, and my second longest race ever.  Fortunately, this time I bested my HHH experience simply by crossing the finish line under my own power.  As Woody Allen famously said, 80% of success is just showing up.  I’d only add that the other 20% is just finishing.  And for every rider who showed up this weekend and eventually rolled across the finish line, I’d say they were successful.